The women in Department K—Dot’s unit—were a “very fine group,” according to one Lieutenant Bradley, an Army officer who rotated into the unit late in 1943. He was there when a break into a new square led to “great glee over the entire place.” He watched as dozens of new recruits joined and became adept. At first, readers needed overlaps that were ten or fifteen messages deep to recover code groups, but they soon needed fewer and fewer. “The pattern was the main thing,” said Lieutenant Bradley. “There was no information service or cribbing section at that time. Each reader had to depend on what
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